


This Is Getting out of Hand

by lucymonster



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Enemies to Enemies, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:54:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23484880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/pseuds/lucymonster
Summary: Having brought the First Order to its knees through his clever spywork, Hux makes it back to the Resistance base. He's expecting accolades. Gratitude. A full pardon thanks to his timely defection.He's not expecting to learn that Kylo Ren survived Exegol as well. Life's not fair.
Relationships: Armitage Hux & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 10
Kudos: 27
Collections: Party in the GFFA: Star Wars Flash Exchange 2020





	This Is Getting out of Hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [frozensea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frozensea/gifts).



By the time Hux’s slicers intercept the location of the Resistance base, it’s unnecessary: news of the calamity on Exegol has spread, and rebel cells around the galaxy are pouring out of hiding like roaches from an upturned rock. The only challenge is to find his preferred contacts before anyone less informed finds him. Hux is still wearing his blastproof vest, a ragged hole in his shirt the only mark of Pryde’s recent attempt on his life. The vest is plasteel weave, built to deflect any number of impacts, but he’d rather not test it again.

He’s a rebel now. A defector. A fugitive from tyranny. A new era has begun, and as Hux orders his pilot droid to bring him down beside a familiar rusted-out Corellian flying saucer, he braces himself for the inevitable onslaught of humidity when he opens the airlock. Hux is a son of civilisation, a child of progress and clean filtered air. Jungle moons don’t suit his constitution. He pats his pockets, checks his inhaler is close at hand.

Kylo Ren’s regime is in ruins. A small amount of respiratory distress is a bargain price to pay for such triumph.

‘I’m unarmed,’ he says as he disembarks, hands up in the universal gesture of peace. He’s lying, of course. He’s not that stupid. But the monomolecular-blade dagger in his sleeve shouldn’t register on any Resistance weapons scanner, and if his luck holds, he’s unlikely to need it anyway. So far things look good. Two of the people clustered around the _Millennium Falcon_ ’s landing struts are Hux’s contacts: the traitor FN-2187 and his unkept friend with the rumpled shirt and the dark, shaggy mop to rival Ren’s. The Wookiee is there, too, the one whose escape from the _Steadfast_ Hux facilitated. The beast owes him a life debt. Hux expects he’ll remember that.

The blasters they turn on him are no great surprise. Hux’s reputation precedes him, clearly, if even his new allies and beneficiaries know better than to doubt the threat he could pose if he wished. The accompanying eyerolls are less expected, though he chalks them up to typical rebel churlishness – the uncivilised brutes know no better than to bite the hand that feeds them. He can hardly expect gratitude for having saved all their skins and enabled them to free the galaxy from beneath Ren's thrashing toddler fist.

What he’s not expecting is for FN-2187 to reholster his blaster and announce, in a tone of disgust pitched to carry: ‘No. You know what, this isn’t my problem. Rey’s so keen on second chances for murderous jackboot-licking assholes? She can deal with him. Get him out of my sight.’

Rey. The name is only too familiar: she’s the scavenger, the object of Ren’s obsession, the cause of so many tantrums and wasted resources. Hux can’t suppress his smirk as the rebels frogmarch him across the landing flat towards a dank, dirty cave that presumably passes for an operating centre. How fitting that he, Hux, the architect of Ren’s downfall, should land under the protection of the girl Ren failed so many times to capture. He’ll have so much to tell her about their mutual nemesis. He wonders if she was the one who – 

– killed him.

Hux stops. Blinks. Blinks again, harder, but his eyelids can’t dislodge the nightmare vision. He’s reached the mouth of the cave, where two figures are sitting in close conversation. One of them is the girl. But the other…

Blind, panicked rage descends. With a strength Hux would never have known himself capable of, he throws off his captors and whips the dagger from his sleeve. A lunge forward. A primal roar in his ears. A sensation in his throat that suggests he, somehow, is the source of the noise. But he doesn’t care. Something inside him has broken and all he knows is the song of his dagger, singing for blood.

He doesn’t make it far into the cave before the inevitable happens and Hux finds himself gripped by a paralysis he thought he’d escaped forever. Suspended mid-stab, frozen except for his eyeballs, he uses the last range of motion he has left to glare into the hated face of Kylo Ren. Alive against all reason. Changed, somehow – no scar, no eye twitch, no vibrating rage. No helmet, cloak or tunic. He looks well. Tired, but healthy and happy. _Happy._

‘Ben,’ the girl says, and rests a warning hand on his shoulder. A hand. Not a blaster or a dagger or a binder lock. A hand.

Ren’s lips curve into a smile that will haunt Hux until the end of his days. ‘Hi, Hux,’ he says. ‘Guess you made it out too.’

Hux’s vision washes out crimson. Something impossible happens: in the strength of his fury, the paralysis lifts. He only needs his limbs for one purpose. He will kill, kill, kill, _kill_ – 

* * *

‘That should hold him,’ says Finn, fastening one more lock around the cage door. Smoke issues from the broken wall console behind them. Ben’s eye is swelling up, his vision slightly blurred on the side of his vision where Hux lies in a mercifully comatose heap. It took his and Rey’s combined Force strength plus a triple dose of banthaweight sedative to finally subdue him.

‘I don’t think he’s pleased I survived,’ Ben says.

‘Really?’ Finn is deadpan. ‘Can’t relate. Rey, you know I’m here for you come hell or high water, but that’s the last time I’m getting involved in this circus. Keep your pet maniacs in separate tents so they don’t break any more of our stuff.’

‘ _He’s_ not my pet maniac,’ says Rey, which is not how Ben would have chosen to word the rebuttal.

‘He’s a defector from First Order High Command. If you decide we’re allowed to execute those now, I’m fine with it. But you’ll have a hard time explaining to the others why it’s different rules for different turncoats. One way or another, they’re a package deal.’

Ben has one source of comfort: when Hux comes around again, he’ll get to explain through the bars that it’s his influence keeping Hux from the firing squad. It won’t be enough fun to make up for the tedium of having him around again. But it’ll still be fun.


End file.
